Regina Carter

North America

Sony Masterworks recording artist Regina Carter is the foremost jazz violinist of her generation. Her quest for beauty combined with her passion for excellence did not escape the attention of the MacArthur Foundation, who awarded Regina their prestigious fellowship “genius grant.” Regina’s recent release, Ella: Accentuate the Positive, and touring program, Simply Ella, mark the 100th birthday of a musical legend. The program celebrates the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald – THE source of Regina’s musical inspiration. An influence she has cherished throughout her life, Regina describes her visceral connection to Ella’s music:

“Growing up in Detroit, there was always music playing in our home. While there was a variety of music I enjoyed, there were a few recordings and artists I found consistently captivating. Ella Fitzgerald was one of these exceptions. To this very day, whenever I hear an Ella recording it grabs me at my core. I’m entranced by her voice, her melodic improvisations and the passion and artfulness with which Ella sings a song. She helps me understand a song by providing a window to its essence. In a word, Ella is sublime, and she is at the top of my go-to list when learning a jazz tune. Perhaps Jimmy Rowles said it best, “Music comes out of her. When [Ella] walks down the street…she leaves notes.” I’m so excited to celebrate Ella Fitzgerald, an artist who has meant so much to all the notes in my musical life.”

From DownBeat Magazine – October 2017
Simply ELLA
By: Dan Ouellette
Violinist Regina Carter has spent much of 2017 promoting her 10th album, _Ella: Accentuate The Positive (OKeh), which is not only a superb tribute to Ella Fitzgerald in the centennial of her birth, but also a depply personal homage to the First Lady of Song.

From Billboard
Common, Karriem Riggins and Esperanza Spalding Help the Detroit Jazz Festival Cross Over
By: Natalie Weiner
“I’m a Motown baby, a jazz baby—a music baby,” Regina Carter told the crowd at the Detroit Jazz Festival last Sunday, a hometown hero in the midst of one of the most star-studded jazz line-ups of the festival season (Sept. 1 to...

From The San Diego Tribune
Violin great Regina Carter shines with jazz, classical, blues, rock, country and African music
By: George Varga
Regina Carter has been widely hailed as the finest violinist in jazz. But that only tells part of the story for this Detroit native, whose past collaborators range from Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin and Joe Jackson to Cuban...

From Huffpost
She Plays Musical Instruments
By: Jill Tietjen
Jazz violinist Regina Carter began playing the piano when she was two years old. Her formal study of the Suzuki method for playing the violin began when she was four. As a teenager, Carter played with the youth division of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She studied jazz in college, graduating in...

From DownBeat
Brownie’s Legacy In Good Hands at Hometown Fest
By: Eugene Holley Jr.
Danilo Pérez, Somi and Regina Carter headlined the 29th edition of the DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival, which ran from June 21–24 in Rodney Square in downtown Wilmington, Delaware. The fest showcased the global musical inventions and dimensions of musicians from three continents —from the French...

From Chicago Tribune
Review: Regina Carter, collective celebrate jazz greats Ella and Miles in novel ways
By: Howard Reich
The best musical tributes look forward, not back, illuminating how a jazz musician’s life impacted what was yet to come.
To varying degrees, the homages to singer Ella Fitzgerald and trumpeter Miles Davis that played Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center on...

From WBEZ 91.5 Chicago
Jazz Violinist Regina Carter Pays Tribute To Ella Fitzgerald
By: Jason Marck
As musicians and music fans alike honor Ella Fitzgerald on the centenary of her birth, internationally acclaimed jazz violinist Regina Carter is paying tribute to the “First Lady of Song” on her new album Ella: Accentuate The Positive.
“The first time I put on...

From The Chicago Tribune
Violinist Regina Carter explores the beauty of Ella
By: Howard Reich
Ella Fitzgerald’s 100th birthday — on April 25 — has come and gone, but the celebration continues, as well it should.
The next major tribute comes in an unexpected form, not from a jazz singer but from the multifaceted violinist Regina Carter.
Carter’s new recording,...

From NY Observer
The Best In Jazz
By: Ron Hart
Regina Carter, The Jazz Standard, May 18-21
2017 marks the 100th year since the birth of the mighty, mighty Ella Fitzgerald, undoubtedly the greatest vocal interpreter of jazz who ever sang into a microphone. And violinist Regina Carter has been beautifully translating her heroine’s unmistakable scatting skills for strings since she...

From Downbeat Magazine
Ella: Accentuate The Positive – Regina Carter
By: Frank Alkyer
Violinist Regina Carter is at the top of her art here on this fantastic tribute to Ella Fitzgerald on the occasion of her 100th anniversary. Carter shows she is in full command of her talents from the downbeat of the opening tune “Accentuate The Positive,” a very...

From Jazz Weekly
Regina Carter: Ella-Accentuate the Positive
By: George W. Harris
Violinist Regina Carter gives homage to the songs that were performed by Ella Fitzgerald, but with her own signature delivery. Her violin is a rich and flowing voice in and of itself, and she teams up with Marvin Sewell/g, Xavier Davis/key, Chris Lightcap/g and Alvester Garnet/dr for a...

From Black Grooves
Regina Carter – “Ella: Accentuate the Positive”
By: Allie Martin
Jazz violinist Regina Carter’s newest album, Ella: Accentuate the Positive, is an ode to the music of Ella Fitzgerald in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the singer’s birth. Featuring nine arrangements of Fitzgerald’s songs, this album puts Carter’s imagination on full display. This is not her...

From JazzTimes
JT Track Premiere: “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”
On April 21, OKeh Records/Sony Music Masterworks will release Ella: Accentuate the Positive, jazz violinist Regina Carter’s new album celebrating the music of Ella Fitzgerald, and marking the 100th centennial of Fitzgerald’s birth.
For this project, Carter selected songs both familiar and from deeper in Fitzgerald’s catalog, envisioned through a lens of...

From WBUR
Jazz Violinist Regina Carter Celebrates The Legacy Of Ella Fitzgerald
By: Alison Bruzek and Meghna Chakrabarti
Jazz violinist Regina Carter’s new album, “Ella: Accentuate the Positive,” was inspired by musical legend Ella Fitzgerald’s 100th birthday. She joins us to talk about a few of the tracks.
Regina Carter will be performing Friday, February 10 at the Sanders Theatre...

From KBIA
Regina Carter: The KBIA Interview
By: Trevor Harris
For her ninth release ‘Southern Comfort’, jazz violinist Regina Carter researched music of American South from the early 20th century. In a recent interview with KBIA’s Trevor Harris, Carter talked about her early Detroit influences, the value of knowing your musical history and the timelessness of Ella Fitzgerald. Carter brings...

From The Guardian
by John Fordham
If attention spans are getting shorter in the 21st century, nobody’s told Regina Carter. The Detroit-born jazz violinist played Ronnie Scott’s with a drummer-less acoustic group, sometimes at a barely perceptible murmur, but her unfolding of a theme is so revealing, and her improv ideas so fresh, that listeners soon sense they can’t afford...

From Knoxville Mercury
Regina Carter Offers New Perspectives on Jazz Tradition
By: Matthew Everett
When Regina Carter decided she wanted to switch from classical music to jazz, in the mid 1980s, she faced a dilemma. She was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, but the school didn’t have a jazz program. So she transferred to Oakland...

Regina Carter is an extraordinary musician. Time magazine said of the jazz violinist, “Wonderfully listenable, probingly intelligent and, at times, breathtakingly daring.”
But this adventurous artist, who performs with her quartet at Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Saturday, also remains a student of music. Her appetite for expanding her musical knowledge is insatiable.
In recent years, Carter has been consumed with...

From The Chicago Tribune
For Chicago jazz lovers, it was a very good year
By: Howard Reich
Chicago jazz listeners heard great sounds in 2014, including:
Regina Carter, Oct. 24, the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts: Magical sounds usually emerge when Carter picks up her violin, but this performance shed particular light on her stylistic versatility. The...

From AARP
14 Best Music Releases in 2014
By: John Murph
From Neil Young and Bob Dylan to Prince and Dianne Reeves. See who else made our cut…
Dianne Reeves
Beautiful Life (Concord)
The heralded jazz singer offers spellbinding makeovers of pop and soul gems, including Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You.” What could be more divine?...

From The Chicago Tribune
From jazz to tango, Regina Carter transcends genre
By: Howard Reich
There’s something uniquely moving about hearing folkloric music played at the highest concert level.
When that happens, listeners encounter the songs of everyday life played with a technical virtuosity and tonal sheen they richly deserve but rarely receive.
This was the thrust of violinist Regina...

From The California Aggie
Regina Carter to take Mondavi Center stage
By: Chloe Catajan
The wonder of music is its ability to combine creativity, passion and history into one collective sound. Jazz violinist Regina Carter showcases this phenomenon in her latest album, Southern Comfort, which explores and honors popular music during her grandfather’s days as a coalminer in Alabama.
Carter...

From The Arts Fuse
Fuse Concert Review: Violinist Regina Carter’s Ancestral Magic
By: Jon Garelick
Regina Carter is a virtuoso who favors form over firepower. In their Celebrity Series of Boston show at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge on Friday night, the violinist and her band showed off plenty of nimble chops, but they weren’t looking to burn the Sanders crowd...

From WBUR
Regina Carter’s Jazz Goes Almost Everywhere
By: Tom Ashbrook
Regina Carter made her name as a jazz violinist out of Detroit. And just kept going. To the violin’s history with Paganini. To her family history, with the American songbook, then the sound of Africa, and now, to her grandfather’s music. The Alabama coal miner. The tapes of Alan...

From The Phoenix
The spark of inspiration
A conversation with Regina Carter
By: Johnette Rodriguez
If ever a musician understood the importance of exposure to music at an early age, it would be Regina Carter, who — family legend has it — at two years old, played a melody by ear on the piano after hearing her brother’s lesson. At...

From The Providence Journal
Renowned violinist gives offbeat lesson at Barrington High School
By: Andy Smith
Violinist Regina Carter listened carefully Tuesday afternoon while the jazz ensemble at Barrington High School played a blues song called “The Subtle Sermon.”
When the music stopped, Carter applauded, said a few words of praise — then turned to the 25 students assembled in...

From Centre Daily Times
‘Southern Comfort’: Regina Carter’s musical career mirrors personal journey
By: Kecia Bal
If people look deeper — or listen closer — they may discover shared roots tangled among the soulful songs of the American South.
That’s one of the messages behind Regina Carter’s recent albums — and one she hopes audiences at the Center for the...

From The Boston Globe
Regina Carter pursues ancestral strains
By: Jon Garelick
About 10 minutes into my phone conversation with violinist Regina Carter, we’re interrupted by the loud blast of a train whistle on her end of the line in Maywood, N.J. “Petticoat Junction!” says Carter with a hearty laugh. We wait for the second blast before Carter continues. “Luckily,...

From The Chicago Tribune
Digging deeply into our musical roots
By: Howard Reich
…Sharing a double-bill, they took on a vast swath of musical culture in America reaching back in time, from the civil rights anthems Staples dispatched with fire to the old Appalachian folk tunes Carter played as if born to that era. The spirit of folkloric American song...

Regina Carter's Southern Comfort

Violinist Regina Carter is considered the foremost jazz violinist of her generation — a designation which doesn’t quite paint the full picture. For Regina, the violin isn’t merely an improvisational vehicle. It’s a passport to unexpected realms, a Rosetta stone that unlocks the door to a myriad of cultures and worlds. As a result of her curiosity, passion, and quest for beauty brought to every stop taken on her full musical journey, Regina was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (a “genius grant”). Those qualities are more apparent than ever on her critically acclaimed release, Southern Comfort (Sony Music Masterworks), on which she explores the folk music of the South. On Southern Comfort, Regina interprets her own roots through a modern lens. “In the Appalachians there were Scottish and Irish descendants, slaves and Native Americans. It was a cultural hodgepodge and the music resulting from it is intoxicating. This disc was to pay homage to my family,” said Regina, “but it turned out to be so much more.”

Regina Carter Symphony

Considered the foremost jazz violinist of her generation, Regina Carter transcends genre in a symphony program that draws influences not only from jazz, but blues, roots, and classical idioms as well. The centerpiece of this collection is a piece entitled Four Sisters composed by David Schiff to honor four legendary vocalists: Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan. In a breathtaking performance of Four Sisters with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Regina “announced her charismatic presence by painting the air with swing” (Detroit Free Press). This piece is for solo violin and orchestra. Regina also has charts for jazz quartet plus orchestra, including a selection of jazz standards and classical pieces made effortlessly cohesive by Regina’s unique tone and signature style. Regina brings her curiosity, passion, and quest for beauty to every stop taken on her full musical journey — just a few of many reasons she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (a “genius grant”).

Scored for large orchestra with triple winds.

A talented, charismatic player who is almost single-handedly reviving interest in the violin as a jazz instrument.The Los Angeles Times

Ms. Carter is enormously gifted, bringing a blues sensibility to her improvisations.The New York Times

Regina Carter creates music that is wonderfully listenable, probingly intelligent and, at times, breathtakingly daring…taking the listener into the future of jazz.Time Magazine

Her impeccable pitch, lovely grace notes and delicately bent pitches reminding listeners of why she practically has become a symbol of jazz violin in our times. Moreover, she reaffirms that music as wholly accessible and entertaining as this also can be smart and sophisticated.The Chicago Tribune